spinach

I make a lot of other peoples’ gluten free recipes, but every now and then I take something into my head and it won’t leave until I make it.

I’m not the hugest fan of polenta, like cream of wheat, the texture bugs me out a little bit…and even fried it’s just never done anything for me. But this week, I had a polenta epiphany!!

I was out checking on the garden, and noticed that my basil plant was starting to go a little crazy. Crazy basil= pesto.

I had a bunch of pasta last week, so I decided to try something different….and polenta came to mind. Without even googling to see what anyone else had done, I set to work on my polenta pie.

The first step is making the pesto. I used this pesto recipe without the pine nuts (I just didn’t have any, and it’s fine without). My only change was an extra clove of garlic and a splash of milk because I like my pesto creamy.

Once the pesto was done, I browned a diced chicken breast in garlic and oil.

I covered that pan to keep the heat in, set the oven to 350, and put water to boil for the polenta.

I made a single portion of polenta to package instructions, and as soon as it had thickened, scooped it into a pie plate I had waiting.

Using a rubber spatula, I smoothed it into a layer about an inch thick, then I “iced” the polenta cake with a generous pesto layer. After that, I sprinkled on the chicken, placed two fistfuls of baby spinach on top of that, layered on some slices of fresh mozzarella, sprinkled on my diced Roma tomato and then spritzed the whole creation with balsamic vinegar.

When I was done, it looked like this:

Then I popped it into the oven for just long enough to melt the cheese, which took about 12 minutes. Just long enough to clean up the kitchen!